


Count to Four

by dianano



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: (which was my original theory before it was revealed), F/M, Number One is the Red Angel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2020-11-24 15:35:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20909978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dianano/pseuds/dianano
Summary: The USS Discovery takes a risk to track down the Red Angel. But when she takes off the helmet and asks for Michael’s help, the results are unexpected.





	1. Ciri Hotendays Imbar-e Simue X’Cale

_Illyrian New Humans Title Conventions, Article 7, Subsection 3XY_

_In the case of a nuclear family, consisting of two or more parents and underaged offspring, the parent of superior intellect will receive the title “Number One,” and the parents following as “Number Two,” “Number Three,” and so on. After this comes the offspring, in age order._

* * *

Michael Burnham took burning, struggling breaths against the punishing atmosphere. It burned. She knew it would, but somehow the real thing was terrible, and terribly different. Her vision was fading when something… shocking appeared before her.

As if in slow motion, as her thoughts moved through what felt like glue, shewatched a hole split the scenery apart, and a suited figure flew through. It hovered above her, and her mind was distantly aware that it's a race between the angel, who is freeing her of her constraints, and the trapping mechanism around her. There was a feeling of strong arms lifting her, and then…. Nothing.

* * *

“Captain?” Bryce piped up from across the bridge, and heads swiveled towards him. “Comms are still down, but we’re getting incoming data from Commander Burnham’s tricorder.”

“Onscreen.”

One by one, the still images from Burnham’s tricorder filtered in. First, a blurry shot of grass, then an empty signpost. Pike rose from the captain’s chair and strode towards the viewscreen in confusion, which made the crew turn to look at him. He examined the images closely before turning back to the rest of the crew.

Signpost. Road. A large building. Steps. A door. A living room.

“That’s my house,” Pike said, so quietly that he had to raise his voice. “That’s my family home, Nella Inn. My moms run a bed and breakfast, I grew up there.”

The crew took a moment to look at each other, and Pike snapped out of it.

“Bryce, open a channel, long range civilian, to Hazel Richards in Mojave, California.”

Bryce obliged, and within a few seconds of silence (Keyla looked at Joann, Joann looked at Keyla) an older woman with graying hair and a broad smile appeared onscreen.

“Chrissy!” she said affectionately, and one could probably process the moment when the crew registered that this was their captain’s mother. “What happened to your bridge? Where’s Number One- I need to tell her that Waltz is pregnant, she’s due to foal in December.”

Spock gave a faintly amused grimace- the captain’s mother was apparently a familiar sight to him. Pike chuckled as well.

“Already told her, ma’am. But she’s on the Enterprise, remember? This is Discovery.”

“Right, right, Discovery,” Hazel said. “Well, get back to Enterprise soon.” (This earned a full snicker from the bridge crew.)

"Of course," Pike says. "But I'm afraid I need to ask you a couple of questions. We're running against the clock. And I promise I'll call you back later."

"I'll hold you to that. Go ahead."

"Where are you right now?"

Hazel looked around. "The kitchen," she said. "Blaze and Micareh are upstairs."

"Is anyone there?"

At that, Hazel looked back at the Captain with so much surprise that it made him backtrack.

"We're dealing with some spatial anomalies," he said, "And we tried to get a probe to Nella, but it seems to have failed, given your reaction."

The look in Hazel's eyes clearly called bullshit, but Pike stood firm.

"Sorry to bother you, Mom, but thank you for your help. I'll call soon."

With a quick gesture behind his back, he signalled for Bryce to cut the comm. Pike retreated back into the captain's chair and exhaled deeply.

"Well, I'll get chewed out for that conversation in a couple of hours," he said, "But at least now we know we're dealing with time travel."

"The anomaly is still open if we're getting a signal," Nielsson added. "It's possible that Burnham can escape back to our time and place through there."

"So we'll stay put," Pike said. "Have the surface team reatmospherize the building and get that anomaly checked out."

"Yes sir," Owosekun said, and turned back to her console to send along the message to the surface.

It was a hushed scene as the creaking roof sealed and the facility began to fill with air again. Even the surface team, now with their orders, were quiet as they prepared to study the anomaly and find out where Burnham had gone.

Detmer drummed her console. Pike tapped his foot. Owosekun fiddled with her hair. Nobody knew what was going on, and it filled the room with apprehension and dread. And thoughts of Michael, who had been gasping for breath moments ago, would have easily etched themselves in their brains even without her being stolen away by a time traveler seconds later.

Pike fiddled with his jacket while he worried his way through the whole scene. Besides his obvious concern for Michael's safety, he was also worrying about how Starfleet, the Capitol-S organization and their army of admirals would take their little Angel-trapping experiment. Not well, probab-

"Captain!"

His eyes flashed up to the screen, where all number of sensors were spiking and going crazy. The vortex was reopening, and someone on the bridge let out a gasp as Michael tumbled out. Though perhaps that wasn't exactly the cause of her shock, because something else had come through with her. Or rather, as the pile untangled itself, two somethings.

"MED TEAM!" Michael's voice rang surprisingly clear for someone who had been suffocating only moments before. "CULBER! WE NEED MEDICAL ASSISTANCE!"

She turned to face her two companions, as Tilly, Culber, and Stamets exited the observation area from another camera angle and started to run towards the platform. The taller person, who as they stood up, revealed herself to be even taller than Michael, but with ungraceful balance and a young, almost childlike face. No, that was it. A teenager. Pale skin that was flushed from the heat- burn marks. As Michael turned away from the camera to help the other newcomer, the teenager zeroed in on the camera and stared at it.

Culber reached them first, quickly observing the teenager's burns before moving Michael aside to deal with the other person who had come through the portal. That one was just a child, probably 10 at the oldest, clutching a stuffed turtle. She had burns on her arms, ones that Burnham's uniform seemed to have protected her from. And like most 10-year-olds would react, she was crying.

"Are you okay?" Tilly's question to Michael got picked up on the comm to the bridge.

"Yeah, I'm fine," Burnham said. "It's been a weird few hours."

"Kids??"

"Yes," Burnham said. "Kids."


	2. Christopher Richard Pike

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Michael explores the house.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oof, I haven't updated in a long time. Sorry? Got a big chapter to make up for it, at least.... this bad boy clocks in at over 2,200 words.

One time, Michael had asked Joann what life had been like in the Luddite colony. Joann had said, with an unreadable expression, that there were little-to-no computers or electronics, save for a few government offices that used them after a fire destroyed their records. Other times, there were electronics like old street lamps that no longer functioned after years of intentional neglect.

This house was the same way. Well, house was almost a misnomer- it was large, built into the hillside, and the cedar paneling nearly reminded her of Sarek and Amanda’s home. She had arrived on a path leading up to the building, next to a signpost that no longer bore a name, and taken the stairs. Along the way, she had stopped several times to scan with her tricorder and take photographs, though it seemed unlikely that the images would get back to Discovery before she did.

Following the path, she climbed the stairs to a porch, which held a glass doorway. She briefly considered picking the lock or using a magnet to manipulate it, but this train of thought was interrupted by the observation that the door was unlocked.

The most interesting thing about the main room by far was the lack of dust. There were very few personal artifacts of any kind, though the kind of person wealthy enough to live in this kind of house might not live here full-time. But her observational training kicked in and noticed that the house was spotlessly clean, and in fact showed signs of recent use- the replicator is still on and running.

Moving into the kitchen area (which is still  _ massive _ , and she’s becoming increasingly curious), she observed and recorded dishes neatly stacked, and tea still lukewarm on the counter.

On the right wall, however, there was an answer to her questions about the building’s size. Several plaques showed that “Nella Bed & Breakfast” is an award-winning California inn. So she’s in California now? This mission kept getting weirder and weirder. Her father was from California, but she’d never been outside of San Francisco. Airiam mentioned having family there, and the only other person she can think of with connections to the area is Captain Pike.

…

Wait.

Further down the hall were pictures, and Captain Pike featured heavily among them. She could almost recognize the dimpled smile in several photos of a child, then a gangly teenager on horseback, a cadet in uniform, and finally in a golden jacket. In many of them he was surrounded by several older women, which might be his mothers that he’d mentioned in passing. He’d never mentioned siblings, though Michael observed several photos of young girls that bore a passing resemblance to the captain, and in one he was proudly holding an infant. Nieces or nephews, most likely, since the photos looked recent.

It seemed like it could be an invasion of privacy to scan these with her tricorder, so she just kept looking at them. And the more she looks, the more she saw other recognizable faces in the photos. In the cadet photos, she recognized a young Captain Georgiou, then Admiral Cornwell, and- amazingly, a bright-eyed Captain Lorca and Leland. They were all smiling and waving their uniform caps in the air.

There was Spock, clean-shaven, in the background of a team photograph of the Enterprise bridge crew. Pike must have been the one taking the photo, because the captain’s chair was filled by a brunette woman. She’ was actually in several of these photos- smiling with Pike in dress uniform, playing with the nieces.

Then Michael heard the scream.

It was coming from upstairs, so she bolted up the wooden staircase and towards an open balcony. A stone-paneled patio, facing inwards to the hill, and surrounded by wildflower patches. There were people there, to her shock, but they appeared almost holographic, not really there. Ash had described the temporal distortions to her similarly- if she had to guess, this was probably an effect of the Red Angel’s arrival. This had happened, just many years ago.

The breeze of the garden cooled the heat of many people hurrying around each other. In the middle, surrounded by blankets laid on the stone, a heavily pregnant woman was supported by several other women. She was undressed, and paces in place as a doctor whispered to her to guide her breathing. It bears a resemblance to the labor traditions of Vulcan, and that of the Ancient Egyptians.

One by one, Michael recognizes the women supporting her. These were Pike’s mothers. She was witnessing Captain Pike’s birth.

The woman screams again, and the scene changed. The mothers were older now, one of them in a wheelchair, and they stood further away from the pregnant woman. Captain Pike was here too, pacing in civilian clothing, and honestly he looked more nervous than the woman, who was further away. It seems like it was earlier in the labor, since she sat on a low wall and talked patiently with a doctor while the captain paced. One of the mothers got fed up with this and snapped her fingers at him, and pulled him inside the doorway where Michael was standing.

“Christopher,” she said firmly, like how Michael’s own mother used to when she was at her most irritated, “Labor is one of the most difficult natural processes in human life. And if you can’t be supportive during this, leave. It’s as simple as that.”

In his 40s and a Starfleet captain, Pike was still completely cowed by a dressing-down from his mother. It was almost amusing. He nodded, said “yes ma’am,” and took a step back. 

“Good.” His mother said. “Now go help your wife.”

Pike stepped back into the patio as Michael’s eyes snapped back towards the woman with a realization- this was the future. One day, the captain will have a family and children, but this had evidently not happened yet. He walked across the patio, blocking her view of the pregnant woman, and the scene faded away.

“This house is full of emotions.” The voice behind her, now very real, made Michael spin around and reach for a phaser that isn’t there. The woman standing there, in a black flight suit, was unperturbed by Michael’s surprise. “There’s that, the knock at the front door that’s here to tell me someone died, the piano that plays songs unprompted. I’ve even found my girls playing with the time reflection of Chris as a child. The house records strong emotions.”

Satisfied that the woman means no harm, Michael took a moment to study her. Her shoes carried traces of mud from outside, and her jumpsuit was a black Starfleet flight suit, wearing at the seams and joints. 

Her face was set in a determined jaw, with thin lips that seemed to be used to passing judgements efficiently. It had to be the officer in the photographs, who evidently became the more fatigued, graying woman before her.

"Where am I?" Michael asked. Clearly, she was in the woman's house, and probably the captain's house, but much more still eluded her. Her brain felt… fuzzy. Like her efforts to use logical, Vulcan observation weren't quite clicking at the moment.

"You're in California," the woman said. "As for when… imagine that I took the instantaneous velocity of January 14th, 2265, and carried on from there for about ten years."

Michael understood tangent lines, sure, but not really in the context of time travel.

"You're the Red Angel?" she asked more bluntly, trying to wrap her mind around the questions she actually meant to ask.

The woman just smiled and patted her on the back.

"I imagine you've got questions," she offered, and moved to head back down the stairs. "I'll fix you some tea and we'll talk it out."

* * *

"This is a nearly identical suit," Michael observed as she fiddled with it. At first, the technical issue seemed to be solvable with a tricorder component, so she had disassembled hers in hopes of repairing it quickly. A few sparks and a burnt finger later, that had proved not to be the case. "Where did you get it?"

"You're going to build it for me," Number One (that's how she had introduced herself) replied smoothly. She'd made them both green tea and laid out the suit on the table for Michael to observe. "That is, if things go to shit in your universe. Bit of a rush job, too-" she patted the suit's shoulder stiffly, like one would a beloved couch that needed to be donated any day now. "Even with your craftsmanship. When you told me this bad girl would only last 50 jumps, you weren't kidding."

"So you noticed the wear about two jumps ago?" She tapped and prodded methodically at the suit like an old-timey doctor, or perhaps a therapist in a less literal sense.

"Yes, and I made my next jump an attempt to grab you to fix it."

"Do I know how?"

"There's a fingerprint scanner in there somewhere with an instruction manual coded to you. I think your future self knew you didn't know."

"I'll be sure to send her flowers," Michael said dryly. "Either way, you only need one part. It’s rare, but we have a few on Discovery."

"Mhm," Number One agreed. "I got that far, but it seemed like a better bet to grab you than to try to break into a lab to get it."

"That's fair," Michael said. "But how are you going to get it back?"

Number One smiled, as if she had just been itching for Michael to ask that.

"Every change made to your timeline affects me here," she said. "Because I just… stole my ex-husband's house and put it in a constant time loop while civilization collapsed around me."

(Michael accepted that line as all the explanation she was going to get about Number One and Captain Pike's relationship. Whether or not she knew that she'd dropped a bombshell for Michael, One continued avidly.)

"So any alterations I make to your timeline change how history played out for me. And I have a vested interest in saving the universe, so my intent is to keep making jumps until I do so."

"But where do I come in?"

"I don't need you to fix my suit all the way, just enough for one more jump to bring you back to your time. Then, you convince Captain Pike to send this highly specific bit of machinery back home and lock it in his safe. Therefore, in this time, I should be able to unlock the safe and have the part waiting for me."

“I don’t know if you’ve met me,” Michael said dryly, “But convincing captains to do what I want isn’t my strong suit.”

This made Number One laugh, first loudly, then fatigued.

“Amen to that,” she agreed. “How about I send you with a bargaining tool for the captain?”

Her logic returning with the last of the caffeine as she downed her cup, Michael raised a single eyebrow. Number One smirked and hit a button on the wall.

“All clear, Tia,” she said into a comm panel that could’ve been taken straight from a starship. (Though given the state of operations here, it might have been.) “Come down to the main room, and bring Owen with you. There’s someone I want you to meet.”

A few seconds later, Michael heard clattering on the stairs as two young girls hurried down. The second they saw Michael, they froze.

“You remember Captain Burnham,” Number One said to the older girl. What? She’d never seen either of them in her life, but the girl nodded. “This is her from the past, so be gentle.”

The girl looked hesitant. 

“Have we met yet?” she asked, directed seemingly at both Michael and Number One. Michael’s instinct was to say no, but she turned to Number One first, who affirmed that with a quick shake of her head. “I’m Tia.”

She was tall, and so she crossed the room in a few quick steps to shake Michael’s hand. Her sibling, who must be Owen, chased after her in smaller steps and also tried to shake Michael’s hand, albeit with a weaker grip from a smaller hand. Probably eight or nine, if Michael knew her ages right. And Tia looked to be a teenager, with gangly height that she tried to hide by slouching, and a blonde undercut. It’s… what’s the trendy term Tilly had taught her? It was an ‘agro-punk’ look.

“Tabitha Pike X’Cale, Commander Burnham,” Number One introduced them to each other. “If you’re comfortable with it, Burnham, Tia and Owen will come with you and help convince Captain Pike to give you the supplies you need, and figure out how to get it back to me.”

“...By getting him to put it in the safe here, in the past, so that you can repair the suit and pick her up.”

“Exactly.” 

Michael’s next instinct was to ask why she needed children for that, but something else clicked in her mind. Number One had said that they were trapped in a time loop for ten years. Tia was probably fifteen, Owen ten. Perhaps there were more sentimental motivations behind sending the girls back to see their father. And she could hardly fault Number One for doing that. So instead, she turned back to the girls. Owen peeked out from behind Tia’s legs.

“Are you two okay with this?”

Tia nodded, and Owen looked at her older sister, before following suit.

Then it was settled.


End file.
